Schillermania!

Phil wearing a Boston Red Sox hat

This week brought a firestorm of Schiller discussion to the web, highlighted by a rare personal missive from Phil himself, unbounded by the chains of a formal press release.

None other than esteemed web journalist and Apple clear thinker John Gruber was the man who instigated this line public of debate with his excellent Daring Fireball piece on Apple’s unclear App Store approval process. The latest in a long line of links and thoughtful comments on the subject, John’s description really painted Apple’s already controversial behavior as nearly indefensible in this particular case*.

Apparently Phil also didn’t like the way this made Apple look, as he not only immediately personally investigated the case but then also took the unprecedented step of emailing John a long and detailed response with permission to publish the content online. In our opinion, Phil’s statements helped humanize Apple’s behavior in ways their previous silence left open for interpretation and well-founded criticism.

Apple’s goals remain aligned with customers and developers. […] While we may not always be perfect in our execution of that goal, our efforts are always made with the best intentions, and if we err we intend to learn and quickly improve.

Regardless of the particulars of this debate, having Phil respond publicly about a controversy regarding Apple’s notoriously private behaviors is an exciting development. Who doesn’t love it every time an Apple Exec shares his thoughts with the world? Best yet, each of Apple’s higher-ups has such a great personality that is apparent each time they talk. With Jobs’ assured boldness, Ive’s passion for design, and Cook’s no-nonesense approach, Schiller’s marketing-infused sunny-side statements** are both amusing, strategic, and informative.

Not everyone on the interwebs was happy to hear Phil take to his soapbox though. Bordering on sacrilege, Mac Journals posted a piece questioning (with evidence) Phil’s historic reliability. Frankly we feel that their case is not without merit, but a little too esoteric and open for interpretation to get worked up over.

Plus in the end we got to learn a little more about Phil Schiller the man, as his letter to Gruber revealed not only that he was a Red Sox fan (previously we knew Phil, a Canadian and thereby natural hockey fan, was fan of the local San Jose Sharks) but also that he was a regular-enough reader of Daring Fireball to have discovered that John is a Yankee’s fan.

*Related: how has this additional press impacted Ninjawords sales?

**Anyone with a copy of the video from Apple Retail’s Q2 Store Meeting should send it our way, as it allegedly features a classic moment of Phil’s effluent marketing prose that the world would love to see.